Iced Tea or Rootbeer??
by Katrina1
Summary: What would happen if there really was iced tea in the bag instead of rootbeer? I know this has been done before, but you'd be surprised. Also includes Tooms, a bra, and a very disgruntled Mulder....


"Mulder ... I wouldn't put my career on the line for anyone else."  
  
There was a tingling pause, then Mulder said, "If there's an iced tea in that bag, it could be love."  
  
Scully's lips quirked slightly, but she looked in the bag. "Must be fate, Mulder - " and she drew out a bottle, " - iced tea."  
  
They looked at each other, and Scully got ready to laugh the situation off. But Mulder wasn't laughing; in fact, he was almost looking coy. "Not fate," he told her solemnly. "Destiny."   
  
The urge to laugh rose in her chest, but she battered it down ruthlessly as usual and instead turned her patented sceptical look on her partner. "How about just good, old-fashioned lust?" she suggested, raising a brow.   
  
There was another pause as Mulder appeared to consider this. In fact, his powerful Oxford-trained psychologist brain was running around in circles frantically, as he weighed up the odds of Scully actually being serious. "That too," he agreed, with a certain amount of caution, and shot a sideways look at her.   
  
Scully heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Good. For a minute there you actually had me worried, Mulder."   
  
Huh? That wasn't quite the signal he'd been looking for. "Meaning?"  
  
"Meaning ...." Suddenly it was Scully's turn to worry. "Meaning I thought maybe you weren't going to take me seriously and ... and brush me off again." Horrified that she might have made a disastrous error, she looked across at him, and was relieved to see his expression suddenly clearing.   
  
Mulder managed a nervous chuckle. "Jesus, Scully, I thought *you* were kidding *me*!"   
  
She looked wryly amused. "That's your role, Mulder."  
  
Another pause.   
  
Then: "So ... your place or mine?"  
  
*Mine! Mine!* Scully had seen his apartment once or twice, and wasn't sure she wanted prolonged contact with any of the surfaces there. However .... "What about your stakeout?" she protested dutifully, although quite frankly she couldn't have cared less about his precious stakeout.   
  
She should have bitten her tongue. "Shit! I forgot about that." Mulder peered around him distractedly, and had a brainwave. "I always knew there had to be one good point about these Bureau cars."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"The room," he explained, looking at her hopefully.   
  
Scully abruptly realised just what kind of pit she'd dug for herself. "You have *got* to be kidding me now...."   
  
XXXX  
  
"Ouch!"   
  
"Sorry."  
  
"Can you take that off? It's digging in my - "  
  
"I'm trying! Would you move your elbow?"  
  
"Which one?"   
  
"How many do you have?"   
  
"I'll move my elbow if you move your - "   
  
A sudden breathy groan. "No - on second thought, leave that just where it is."   
  
"I'd like to, but I can't reach the button. Can you - ?"  
  
"Hold on - " The car began to rock.. "Is that better?"  
  
A sigh. "Yes. Thank you ...."   
  
"Yeah, well don't speak too soon. I'm going to have to take off my trench coat."  
  
"Do you have to? It's freezing in here."  
  
"It's either that, or you put up with my weapon up your - " A sudden gasp. The car stopped rocking.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Uh ... I've got a problem."  
  
"What kind of problem?"  
  
"My zipper's jammed."  
  
"Oh my God. Jammed how?"  
  
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"  
  
"*Mulder*."   
  
"I - ah - ow! I think it's caught in the back of your bra."   
  
A pause, an exasperated mutter, and a struggle. "Ouch!"  
  
"Sorry."   
  
"Mulder, that was my hair!"  
  
"I said I'm sorry." Another struggle. "It won't come undone."  
  
"Undo the catch of my bra, then."  
  
"That's what it's caught in." A longer pause. "Okay, I'm going to try something."  
  
"Like what?"   
  
"Just hold still." This time the struggle was different, more sustained. The car rocked violently. "Scully, what on *earth* are you doing?!"   
  
Muffled: "A tap-dance. What does it *look* like I'm doing?"  
  
"I dunno - I can't see you anymore." Another violent jerk, making the car rock even more aggressively, followed by a triumphant gasp. Scully finally emerged, bra-less and dishevelled, from the tangle of trench-coats, weapon-holsters and jackets. Mulder sagged back against the passenger door, very conscious of the aforementioned feminine undergarment hanging from his fly, and recalled - too late - that backseat trysts had never worked for him as a teenager either. Maybe he was getting too old for this.   
  
One look at his partner changed his mind, and made his eyes nearly stand out on stalks. *Oh, man - * Scully, topless and tousled, felt that she certainly hadn't gone through all that struggle just to give up now. So she turned on the rather shell-shocked Mulder and growled ... which was all the warning he got before she pounced. The struggle with clothing resumed, and the vehicle began to rock again.   
  
XXXX  
  
In the trunk of the car, Mulder's unseen passenger began to get a little fed up with having his head knocked on the underside of the lid, and decided that maybe it was time he got out of here before he ended up with a serious concussion. There was just one problem; every time he got the lid open a crack, the car would rock and snap it shut on his fingers.  
  
Tooms was more than a little pissed by this. Finally, he lost his temper and thumped on the inside of the trunk, wishing they'd just give up for a minute and let him crawl out.   
  
XXXX   
  
In the middle of a renewed struggle with Mulder's zipper the two agents were suddenly brought up short by a *thud* from the trunk of the car. For a moment they stared at each other, wide-eyed, then Mulder sat up and peered out of the rear window.  
  
There was another loud *thump* and the lid of the trunk suddenly flew open. "Jesus, Scully, it's Tooms! He's getting away!"  
  
He wrestled with the car door, but for some reason the handle refused to open it. "What the *hell*?"  
  
"Childproof locks!" Scully rasped.   
  
Mulder cursed, winding the window down frantically. Finally the door was open, and he tumbled out onto the tarmac.  
  
"Mulder, your weapon!"  
  
He snatched the Glock out of her hands, took an impatient swipe at his crotch, ridding himself of the clinging lace brassiere, and took after Tooms at a run.   
  
He had barely gone five paces before he was conscious of an unexpected breeze in an intimate area ..... Mulder's trousers dropped undramatically around his ankles, and the agent came crashing painfully to the ground.  
  
His zipper had finally come unstuck.   
  
XXXX  
  
Tooms made it around the corner and paused, panting, to see if he had been followed. Oddly enough, Mulder seemed to be limping back to the car as if he'd hurt himself ....   
  
Tooms hoped it was a painful injury, and snarled in frustration at having his original plan - to follow Mulder home and finish him off - disrupted. He looked around, considering his options for an unobtrusive retreat, and his eyes fell on a telephone kiosk ... which gave him an idea.   
  
It wasn't quite the revenge he'd planned on, but it would do for now ....   
  
XXXX  
  
Mulder picked himself up off the tarmac slowly, dragged his trousers up around his hips, and began to limp back to the car. There was no point in continuing the pursuit; Tooms would have found himself a crack to crawl into by now, and in any case, the agent remembered that they had no grounds to arrest him anyway.  
  
Inside the car, Scully was sorting through the tangled pile of garments, dignified despite her state of undress. He looked at her naked breasts and despite being conscious of a graze on his nose and a broken zip-fly, Mulder felt a tingle of renewed desire.   
  
Too bad. In the light of this latest debacle, Scully had had enough. Kneeling up on the back seat with her hands planted on her hips, she glared at her partner unsympathetically.  
  
"You'd better have brought my bra back with you."   
  
XXXX   
  
"The Baltimore Police received a complaint at precisely 11.21 pm, presumably from one of the local residents," Skinner was stating austerely. "Apparently a man had been "lurking" outside for several hours in a - " he picked up a sheet of paper and glanced at it for reference, " - metallic grey Ford Taurus. At 10.40 pm he was joined by a woman - " and he shot a searing glance at Scully, seated rigidly in front of his desk, "- whereupon things became, in the words of the complainant, noisy and disruptive to the neighbourhood. By the time the police arrived at the scene, however, both individuals had already left."   
  
Mulder shifted in his seat slightly at this last statement, and heaved a purely inner sigh of relief. Saved ....  
  
"Given the locality," Skinner continued, "I have to ask myself just who the - " he picked up the sheet of paper again and studied it, " - 'tall, lanky guy with the nose' and the 'short, sparky red-head' named in the complaint were."   
  
Both agents froze again. Skinner put the paper down again and took his glasses off, placing them in the centre of his blotter very precisely. "So ...." he said, with deceptive mildness. "You wouldn't have anything you'd like to share with me, would you, Agent Mulder?"  
  
"Me, Sir?" Mulder asked, his tone unconvincing.  
  
"You *are* Agent Mulder, aren't you?"  
  
Mulder debated on a witticism and realised he couldn't think of any. "No, Sir. I mean, *yes*, Sir. And no - I don't think there's anything - "  
  
"So you *weren't* the guy in the car?"  
  
"Sir?"  
  
Skinner paused, and gave the squirming agent a piercing look. Apparently satisfied with the effect of this, he abruptly abandoned Mulder and turned to Scully. "What about you, Agent Scully? Anything you want to tell me?"  
  
"I don't think so, Sir," she replied, maintaining her cool exterior rather more effectively than her discomfited partner.   
  
"Care to tell me just where you were last night at 11.21 pm?"   
  
*Not really.* "I was with Agent Mulder, Sir," she answered truthfully.  
  
Skinner's brows shot up and he leaned back in his chair, shooting a look at Mulder. "At 11.21 pm? Can I ask what the pair of you were doing?"   
  
Scully's mind went blank, but Mulder had suddenly rediscovered his powers of invention. "Yoga," he said. There was a short silence that nevertheless managed to last an eon or so, as Skinner tried to digest this information, and Scully tried to banish inappropriate images of her and Mulder doing ... Yoga.  
  
"Yoga?" the Assistant Director asked finally, his tone more than a little doubtful.   
  
"Yoga," Mulder confirmed.  
  
"Both of you? At nearly midnight?"  
  
"Agent Mulder has trouble sleeping, Sir, and finds Yoga helps him to relax," Scully jumped in. "He's been teaching me for the same reason."   
  
Skinner looked from one to the other and met identical bland expressions. "But ... at nearly midnight?"  
  
Mulder shrugged. "I was busy earlier in the evening."   
  
Skinner opened his mouth to ask what he'd been doing ... and shut it again, giving up in defeat. It was perfectly obvious that they would back each other up until doomsday, and since he could see no benefit in driving the pair of them to bigger and more elaborate lies, he backed down. He had a pretty good idea what had been going on, but there was (almost) no evidence and he wasn't sure he wanted to know anyway.  
  
Still ....   
  
"Get out of here, both of you," he sighed. "And stay away from Eugene Tooms, you understand?"  
  
Their restrained scuttle to the door was almost comical. Skinner waited until they were almost out of the room, before calling: "Oh, and Agent Scully ...."  
  
She stopped reluctantly and turned back. "Sir?" Skinner reached under his desk and pulled something out which he tossed at her. "I believe this is yours."  
  
Scully caught it reflexively and blanched when she saw what it was. It was her bra, a little torn and grubby, neatly packaged up in a clear plastic evidence bag marked "Baltimore PD".  
  
Skinner waited for the door to shut behind her, and leaned back in his chair, laughing softly.   
  



End file.
